your praxis is showing

hayo
hayo
Jul 25, 2017 · 4 min read

one of the challenges in practicing any form of non-capitalism in america is that it’s almost impossible to practice any form of non-capitalism in america. there’s plenty of theory, and that’s good. we need theory. but how to go about actually implementing it in tangible ways?

i’ve actually no idea how to answer this question except by way of meandering around it. there are a thousand answers, a million scenarios. this range is what makes socialist thought at the very least more interesting than capitalist expression. of course, it’s also what makes the socialist/anti-capitalist community so internally contentious.

here’s a thought: most people don’t have the luxury to practice socialism, not really. we’ve debt from a thousand lenders, our jobs consume our time with inadequate compensation, the machines and devices that ostensibly enable us to survive are second- or third-hand and their maintenance is costly. in the rare in-between moments when we can organize or agitate, we are confronted with exhaustion, inadequate social networks (due to the fragmentation created by work schedules, segregation, etc) and a lack of real political power. we may have the best intentions or ideas, but we lack the damn means of revolutionary production.

this isn’t a very ironic thesis. capitalism is inescapable until you escape it, and there’s no clear way to do that in america, at least not right now. i can avoid shopping at wal-mart, but what’s the point of that when i still have to buy my groceries from kroger? my shoes have to come from somewhere, there are no local cobblers available and, of course, buying local is not anti-capitalist in the first place. if i had more money, i might be able to do some tangible things with that — donating to socialist organizations, for instance. i might be able to take time off of work to organize my neighbors into a collective. with more money i might eat a little better and be a little healthier and capable of other kinds of work that would advance my anti-capitalist beliefs.

the point of this isn’t to absolve myself or the working class or the poor of the responsibility to organize for our own future. it’s not to make an excuse or suggest that organizing at all isn’t possible if you’re poor or just getting by. the point i’m going towards is much simpler: chapo trap house has a responsibility to turn its theory into practice, and right now they aren’t doing that.

my position here isn’t anti- or pro-chapo. i enjoy a lot of the podcast, and some episodes (the adam curtis episode, or the one on healthcare i can’t remember the guest) have been unbelievably good and important. there’s also some that are dumb or at least not my thing. most of the criticism of the podcast i find reasonable, and some of the defense i also tend to find reasonable. i follow accounts on twitter from all sides of this argument, and i enjoy those accounts far more than i enjoy the podcast itself.

it’s good that the chapo crew can do a podcast and not have to work at other jobs. it’s also good that somehow they lucked into a nearly million-dollar a year organization. but there’s the issue. chapo trap house is not a hobby, it’s a center of capital. it doesn’t matter how high the rents are in new york. this hard-scrabble crew has an incredibly successful business and now they’ve got to be responsible corporate citizens. these are the rules.

or they’re not the rules. there are obviously a couple of ways to go on this. chapo can take the money and run with it, which is understandable and has a certain amount of dastardly charm that goes along with it. the issue i see being articulated is that some amount of their subscribers might see their donations as more than just purchasing content, but as a political statement in and of itself. and why shouldn’t it be? as ridiculous as the chapo organization might consider it, they’re awfully close to being a kind of think tank for the left, and not an unimportant one.

chapo runs a very real risk of becoming ‘the daily show’ but more bitter. the familiar (and mendacious) appeal from jon stewart to regard him as merely a comedian is just around the corner from chapo, inc. the antidote is to radically shift away from their current business model into something that more clearly aligns with their content. of course, they could go the other way and radically shift their content into something that more clearly aligns with their current practice.

there’s a certain amount of opaqueness that chapo benefits from by securing their wealth from patreon, which is basically uber but for accounting departments. the financial pass-through makes it easier to continue to consider chapo trap house as just a bunch of folks engaging in a lark — we’re brought into their living room as they shoot the shit for a couple of hours. it’s fun.

moving away from this (at this point) incorrect understanding of chapo and regarding it for what it is — a business — might help clarify not only how they should behave as a business, but also what we, as consumers, expect of them. they now have the luxury to actually practice socialism, the interesting question is whether or not they have the guts.

hayo

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hayo

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